A crystal clear day, we could make out Pike's Peak to the east, Snowmass and the Maroon Bells to the west, Uncompahgre to the southwest, and Grays & Torreys to the northeast. What an amazing summit! From south slopes, the final summit pitch is scrambling (class 2+ or 3), don't let Gerry Roach fool you...

I was able to summit both of these peaks in a day. The hike toward bear lake was gorgeous and I did see a bearprint on the trail. The traverse to Columbia is much farther than it looks. However, it is a lot of fun! The scrambling up to Columbia's Summit was boulder-riffic!

This was fun--running the rotten Rabbits from Columbia. I stayed on the ridge crest for as long as possible, until I was stymied by the ears (I think). Not prepared to solo even low-5th class, I detoured under the ears down some slabs into the basin to the west. Atop Harvard, I met a friendly gentleman on top who was cresting middle-age into senior-dom, and who was wearing sneakers, cotton shorts, cotton T-shirt, and floppy canvas bookbag. Turns out he had decided at 4am in Boulder to run up Harvard, and was using the climb as part of his training for Kangchenjunga. Appearances, schmearances--I'm just glad I kept my initial impressions to myself.

On a quick break from college, a friend and I drove from eastern Kansas and ended up backpacking into a camp east of Bear Lake. We summited the next morning, broke camp and headed back out. Another 500+ mile drive and we were back at school.

I climbed Mount Harvard with a couple of friends in High School, we climbed several other 14'ers that year but it remains a blur to me. My friend had to remind me and even produced pictures before I became convinced that I had climbed it.

Had a great day. The hike to Harvard was the easy part, the ridge to Columbia provided a bit more of a challenge in route finding and class 3 moves, but it was well worth it. Surprisingly, we didn't run into that many people doing Harvard, especially for a holiday weekend. We didn't see anyone on Columbia...very peaceful.

We started at the North Cottonwood Creek TH in light snow at 5:15AM and summited in near white out conditions with really strong winds. It was pretty frustrating to watch the late groups enjoy the weather that the early crowd usually earns. Bill, Sharisa, Kara and I summited with our Samoyeds Denali and Yukon.

Summited Mount Columbia and then descended to 12,800 ft before heading back up Harvard's east ridge. While I lost a lot of elevation doing this, it was much quicker than taking the ridge between Columbia and Harvard.

I've done this mountain twice, the first time with Aaron Johnson, the second time with Elizabeth. On the ascent with Aaron, not far from the summit we were hit by a bad hail/snow-storm, and spent 30 or 45 minutes huddled under a rock the size of a small house, eating lunch and being thankful we always drag enough clothing along with us to keep warm! We then continued to the summit through a few inches of icy slush, but under a rapidly clearing sky.

Elizabeth and I took the same route, and had an "interesting" experience when she banged her head on a large rock outcropping hard enough to make it bleed, and it wouldn't stop. Amazingly enough, a hiker immediately behind us was a doctor, took a look at the problem, and we completed the last short bit to the summit without further incident--but believe me, it was a substantial relief to hear those words, "I'm a doctor..."!

All was going well and good until that thunderstorm decided to greet us on top and the entire mountain started buzzing...but other than that, the Horn Fork basin below the mountain would make for some really good camping.